


The Politics of Pleasure

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Glee
Genre: Community: queer_fest, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-23
Updated: 2011-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 17:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Graffiti on the bathroom wall gets Brittany thinking about who she is and what she isn’t. Rating for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Politics of Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** Glee: Brittany, she loves Santana and she loves Artie and she doesn't see why anyone else thinks that's weird.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** The characters are not mine and I am making no money from this work of fan fiction. The title is from [**"What's So Bad (About Feeling Good)?"**](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUt7G464AUQ) by Ben Lee.
> 
> Thanks to [**Concupid**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/concupiscence66) and [**comedychick**](http://comedychick.livejournal.com) for their input. For what works, praise them; for what's still wrong, blame me.
> 
> Dedicated to G.D. and R.R., respectively the first boy and the first girl I ever kissed.

**BRITTANY PIERCE IS A DYKE SLUT**

Here are the thoughts that run through Brittany’s head as she reads these words, scrawled in what looks like eyeliner on the mirror in the girls’ bathroom, in no particular order because they tumble all over each other at once:

She can’t be a dyke; her hair isn’t short enough.

Her mascara looks clumpy.

Why would anyone think she was a dyke anyway? One girlfriend (if Santana’s even that any more anyway) doesn’t make someone a lesbian, and she’s slept with way more guys; how come that doesn’t count for anything? Maybe being a slut by itself isn’t shameful enough anymore?

She’s not ashamed of liking sex anyway.

It’s not eyeliner. It’s magic marker. It doesn’t smear when she tries to rub it off.

Who would write this? She’s a _Cheerio_. Okay, so not really any more (and she _is_ in glee club), but people still aren’t supposed to mess with her.

The stupid mascara is going to look clumpy no matter what she does.

She won’t cry. She _won’t_.

What kind of magic is in a magic marker anyway? It would be more magic if it knew only to go on the paper and not stain people’s fingers or clothes. When it’s fresh it’s sometimes easy to get it off just with paper towels and scrubbing.

This is not fresh. It’s been there a while. How many people have seen it?

What’s so bad about feeling good? She tries not to hurt anyone’s feelings about sex, so how come doing it with more than one person is such a bad thing? People are so _weird_ , the way they think stuff is dirty when it isn’t.

Brittany shoulders her bag, walks out of the bathroom, almost runs headlong into Santana.

“Your mascara is clumpy,” Santana says, and then, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just... don’t go in there.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t, okay? I have to go see Ms Pillsbury.”

She doesn’t need counseling for this, but Ms Pillsbury will know how to get magic marker off glass.

* * *

Ms Pillsbury tries to get her to talk about how she feels about the graffiti. For about five seconds. Then she gets engrossed in the task of scrubbing it off the mirror and Brittany can make a run for it without having to try and put her jigsaw-piece feelings into words that she doesn’t even know.

* * *

She has trouble concentrating during class at the best of times; any classes she shares with Santana and Artie are the worst because she feels like they’re both waiting for her to make some decision that she’s not going to make.

But math’s different. Both of them are in the other math class, the one that isn’t just a step above _If I have three apples and you take one away, how many apples are left?_. So Britt doesn’t have to sit there and feel their eyes on her and get distracted by the corner of Artie’s mouth or the way Santana plays with her hair when she’s bored.

Once, Santana ran out of her own hair and started playing with Brittany’s; they both ended up with dozens of tiny little braids, all over the course of one double period of history.

Once, she spent a whole lunch break sitting on Artie’s lap and kissing him on the corner of his mouth in between bites of her sandwich just because he always shivered, like it was shocking him somehow.

The squeak of the marker on the whiteboard grates on her ears and brings her back to the present. Mr Shipsides is drawing two overlapping circles, one in red, the other in black. Britt copies the diagram – in red and blue because Santana borrowed her black pen and never gave it back – and then stares at it for a moment while Shippy talks about unions, his voice cracking a little as he gestures to encompass the entirety of the diagram.

She slowly shades the red circle in with lines going one way, the blue with lines going the other way. Where they cross over in the middle, the red and blue cross-hatch. It’s pretty.

“...and so if everyone who likes cocoa is the _red_ circle, and everyone who likes coffee is the _black_ circle, what does that make people in the _middle_?” Shippy’s looking at her expectantly, since she’s the only one apparently taking notes.

“People who drink mocha?” Brittany volunteers.

Shippy looks a little confused for a minute and she wonders if he’s ever been to Starbucks. Starbucks would need a lot more than two circles. There’s no circle for whipped cream or low fat milk or flavored syrup on the whiteboard

“That’s a pretty good answer, Brittany,” the teacher finally says, and Brittany feels a warm glow inside her like she just drank a really good skim vanilla latte. “Now, this _middle_ part of the diagram is called the _intersection_...”

* * *

She goes to a different bathroom at the start of lunch to fix her mascara and then goes to see if she can find Quinn or basically anyone who isn’t Artie or Santana to eat lunch with. When she finds Quinn, though, she’s practically eating Finn’s face off and it would probably be a bad idea to interrupt them, so Britt goes outside to eat lunch alone instead.

It’s a nice day.

The air smells like sunshine.

If it can be okay for people to like mocha instead of just coffee or just cocoa, how come it’s not okay for her to like both Artie and Santana?

The lettuce in her sandwich is a little too brown. She starts picking at the edge of it, pulling the grossest bits off.

“Brittany?” Artie’s wheeled up beside her while she was distracted. He looks a little afraid of talking to her. “I heard about the graffiti in the girls’ bathroom. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Brittany says, and then because she’s still mad at him goes up the stairs so he can’t follow her. She does look back at him when she gets to the top and he’s looking at her like he wishes she’d come back.

She doesn’t, though, even if eating her sandwich on her own is pretty boring.

* * *

Glee club rehearsal is after school and everyone’s buzzed about nationals and prom and Britt just wants to sit somewhere that she can’t quite see Santana or Artie.

Somehow this means she ends up sitting next to Kurt, who smells like a vanilla latte. She can’t figure out why. He’s not holding a cup or anything, but the smell’s definitely coming from him.

“Are you sniffing my hair?”

“Sorry.”

“What’s going on with you and Artie?” Kurt’s got his gossip face on; Brittany involuntarily stiffens. “I thought you two were together.”

“We were.”

“And?”

“I don’t really wanna talk about it.” Mr Schue is running late and she really wishes he’d hurry up.

“Brittany, if he upset you or hurt you, you should talk about it.”

“Well, I don’t want to.” A thought occurs to her. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

“Like…”

“Like liking boys _and_ girls. I mean, I know you’re really into boys but you did make out with me that one time, and…”

Kurt gets this really weird look on his face. “You’re not trying to ask me out, are you? Because I’m with Blaine now, and it’s for real, and—”

“What? No! I just wondered if it’s something that happens, like, a lot, or not really.” Mercedes gives her a funny look from the other side of Kurt and Britt realizes she’s getting a little loud and lowers her voice.

Kurt relaxes – a little – but still has that weird look on his face. “Um. Britt, I—” He stops and clears his throat. “Sometimes, I guess. But I’m definitely not into girls, and Blaine isn’t either.”

“This isn’t _about_ you,” Brittany says, suddenly annoyed. “I thought I could _ask_ you because you _know_ about this stuff, but maybe not.” She looks at Artie, who’s using the clear floor space to practice a few freewheeling dance moves, and then up at Santana, who’s fiddling with the hem of her skirt.

She feels Kurt’s hand tug tentatively on her arm and looks back at him.

“Brittany,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. I just—” He shrugs and laughs a bitter little laugh. “I’m used to people talking _about_ me, or behind my back. Not _to_ me. Not about this kind of stuff.”

Mr Schue comes in then, and everyone’s attention turns to him, but Kurt grabs her hand and writes something on her palm and winks at her. Britt tries to wink back but she’s never been really good at only closing one eye at a time so she just kind of blinks a little, but Kurt’s already looking away again anyway.

* * *

The words Kurt wrote on her hand were, “Google bisexuality,” and that’s what she does when she gets home, sprawled out on her bed with her laptop, Lord Tubbington, and a couple of Pixy Stix.

The results that she finds are a little enlightening, a little scary, a little confusing, and a little awesome. She’s never really thought about actually _labeling_ herself before; she just liked guys and liked girls and that was all. Now she knows that there’s a label, and that sometimes people who wear that label get hurt because of it. It’s the same way people pick on Kurt for being gay, which seems unfair because if being straight is the right thing, isn’t she at least half right?

She _still_ doesn’t know why people think it’s weird that she likes both Santana and Artie, considering how many people out there are even more open than her about liking guys _and_ girls. She’s not sure there’s really a reason except that people don’t like people who’re different, or maybe not everyone has done this Google search and knows there’re a lot of people who are this kind of different.

What she does know now, the thought that comforts her when she finally goes to bed and once more has to try to fall asleep without thinking about either Artie calling her stupid or Santana walking away from her, is that she’s not the only one sitting at the intersection of two circles.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tell All the Truth (But Tell It Slant)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/205029) by [osprey_archer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer)




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